Susan Dobson, Harvey´s, 2008

- Prices are changing by the amount of sold copies, edition of 10 in the size 16 x 20 in (ca. 40,6 x 50,8 cm) and edition of 10 in the size 40 x 55 in (107 x 140 cm) 950 € up to 7200 €:

The series titled Retail depicts large franchise retail outlets, commonly known as "box stores," set against vibrant, corporate blue skies and vast deserted parking lots. The structures themselves are digitally filled in with grey, emphasizing each building's outline and establishing a visual relationship with the grey asphalt in the foreground. Grouped with matching horizon lines, they create a visual continuum when the prints are installed in the gallery space.

Recent North American retail architecture is provisional in construction and has a limited life span. Some stores, such as Harvey's, are nothing more than what Robert Venturi refers to as decorated sheds - utilitarian boxes that have no distinct structural form and are distinguishable from one another only by their signage. Others, such as The Beer Store, employ a distinct shape as a form of branding - like subdivision housing, they appear to have been stamped from identical moulds. Curiously, The Home Depot is oddly reminiscent of the Taj Mahal, with its vast expanse of space in front of the building and its long interlocking pathway leading to the front entrance; a shrine to rampant consumerism.

The vibrant blue sky colour may hint at consumer optimism, yet the grey buildings and the expanse of empty asphalt foreshadow the impermanence of retail structures and mass consumption in a time of economic uncertainty and environmental awareness. " Seen within this context, "writes Robin Metcalfe, "Dobson's ghostly big-box stores glisten like a digital mirage, prescient images of a doomed landscape.2"

#1 See Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1977. Part II